This application relates to a gas turbine engine including compressor and turbine rotors assembled using a tie shaft connection.
Gas turbine engines are known, and typically include a compressor, which compresses air and delivers it downstream into a combustion section. The air is mixed with fuel in the combustion section and combusted. Products of this combustion pass downstream over turbine rotors, causing the turbine rotors to rotate.
Typically, the compressor section is provided with a plurality of rotor serial stages, or rotor sections. Traditionally, these stages were joined sequentially, one to another, into an inseparable assembly by welding, or into a separable assembly by bolting using bolt flanges, or other structure to receive the attachment bolts.
More recently, it has been proposed to eliminate the welded or bolted joints with a single coupling which applies an axial force, or pre-load, through the compressor and turbine rotors to hold them together and create the friction necessary to transmit torque. While not prior art, some of these assemblies have experienced an unwinding condition where that pre-load is substantially reduced or lost altogether.